Mark and I got up at about 7:40 am, and Mark and I did a combined walk / run, where I ran to and along the beach with a bit of back and forth until I got to my 3 miles, while he walked along the beach, took photos and chatted with one of two guys we saw with metal detectors. It was a nice breezy morning in the mid-70s, which felt very nice. Back at Polly and Steve’s, we sat on the porch with coffee (water for Mark, who was too hot for tea) and talked for another hour or two about everything under the sun—more politics, homeownership, traveling past and present, and who knows what else! Lindsey joined us for an hour or so, which was really nice–it always amazes me when young people in their twenties (and even teens) put up with the yammerings of us old folks.
Then we packed up our belongings and had a lovely “all the leftovers” lunch before taking off for Houston. It was sad to say good-bye so soon but we may see each other again in Lincoln if Steve and Polly decide to stop by on THEIR road trip later this summer. We went into Houston via the Air and Space Museum, where we stopped just to see a few outdoor exhibits that can be seen without the full tour, for which we didn’t have time or patience. But it was fun to see the Space X Falcon 9 (Mark was riveted by all the specs info about the Merlin engines and the 162-second burn time, while I was feeling ambivalent about Elon Musk and privatizing space tech) and the Space Shuttle “piggyback” on the Boeing 747.
We arrived at our 3-day vacation rental (through a company that is NOT airbnb and seems to actually build and own the apartment buildings it rents out) a little early and walked out the neighborhood, the Museum District, just for a little bit to get our bearings. Then we used all of our magic codes to get into garage, building, and apartment, and unpacked a little. The apartment is spacious with high ceilings, ultramodern and very white (with gray), and it has both a full kitchen and a washer/dryer, which is fabulous. We ended up getting groceries at a whole foods (not walking distance, but just about 10 minutes by car) and will be set until departure for the few edibles we needed to stockpile. We had salad and a lovely boule with VERY organic butter for dinner, and we had even bought ourselves a dessert, so that we each had half of a chocolate silk pie and half of a key lime pie.
After dinner, we set out again, since we had realized how relatively close we were to Rice campus–we could walk there in less than 45 minutes, partly through Hermann Park. I wanted to give Mark a first impression of the campus (which has changed SO much, even in the 10 years since I was last here), and we also wanted to make sure we were on campus once at sunset for the James Turrell light installation, the “Twilight Epiphany,” which runs at sunrise and sunset. It was actually very nice and calming; we watched with about 30 or so other people as the color of the lights shifted around the square of sky, which was gently darkening after the sun had gone down. And then on the way home we could see the bright (and somewhat garish) rainbow light installation that is part of the Methodist Hospital high-rise, as it was getting darker and darker. We got home around 9:15 and were in bed an hour later. Long day!
